Friday, May 16, 2014

"These look cute on you." He slid her hair away from sides behind her ear.
"I do not recall buying these. Colaba or was it from Vile Parle?"
"Neither. When do you ever buy me such things?" She said.
"Yes, I do. Don't you remember those half a day long shopping strolls
at Causeway?"
"That was before we got married. And these are just a gift from.. you
know what, nevermind." She went to the kitchen.
"Anyway, you had left your phone at home." he reclined back on the sofa.
"So, did Kavita Ma'am call? She has been asking about the school
picnic for quite a while now."
She replied, her voice muffled by the sound of the empty utensils.
"No, but Rahul did."
The clutter of utensils stopped.
"And?"
"I did not answer, so after a couple of calls, he left a message."
The kitchen was silent.
"He's asked if you liked the earrings?"

Sunday, April 06, 2014

"What did you do to the rose? It was white!"
"Welcome to the world of chromatography."
"Kromato.. what?"
"Just place it in the vase, five drops of blue ink in the water, give it a day and voilà"
"Interesting, You should bring it to the class and show it to the professor."
Rahul agreed half heartedly to this suggestion.
"See you in the class."

The class had already begun, but Rahul was still in the laboratory.
It was obvious that he ran to the class, and so did he till his lungs couldn't breathe.

Obstacles came into his life as often as Mondays in a month. But this one was different.
She crashed into him, as he cushioned her fall.

The flower symbolized an apology, he gave it to her and resumed his run to the class.

She walked towards the road, trying to imbibe what had just happened.
The rose was still in her hand, she could feel its texture, and the moistness.
She was not sure of its colour, but she never was, about any colours. Even those of the traffic signal.
With years, she had learned about to get around this difficulty, but today her mind was occupied with the rose.
'Was this a red rose?' she wondered. There was nothing to compare.

A car crashed into her, she and the rose laid in the pool of her own blood.

She
smiled as her question was answered. She was colour blinded for life,
but today it wasn't so, Today, she was blinded by love at first sight.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

A bonfire blazed in the courtyard behind the bungalow at midnight. A huge vessel of milk, placed over the fore by three men under the directions of an old lady, was waiting to be boiled.

There was a kind of gloomy yet ceremonial atmosphere.

Two huge lamps, one facing the bonfire and the other facing the bungalow tried to swallow as much of that gloom as possible.

But Neha was in her joyous mood since morning. After all she had a real doll to play with. Her little sister was born. She was happy to see her more than her mother herself. Neha had her little sister’s future schedule all planned. Braiding her hair was the foremost thing she thought she’d do. Neha named her little sister, Tanaya. She was going around telling this name to everyone, even before Tanaya was born. These things for some reason angered her granny. Slaps and beatings from her granny were a common place for Neha. She used to run back to her mother’s tummy when this happened and talked to her yet to be born sister about such slapping incidence. Or any incidence for that matter.

Neha was running to and fro from one lamp post to another, singing her made up songs and getting scolded by her granny.

Amidst that she heard her mother’s cry. A cry that she had never heard before.

She ran to her granny and asked, “Why is my ma crying?”

Not waiting for the granny to reply, she ran upstairs and banged on the door of the room where she thought the cries came from.

Two pairs of large hands lifted her up and locked her into another room, a room filled with tons of sweets, gifts and greeting cards. Cards that read “ To Tanmay”. She wondered who this Tanmay was. Apparently all the gifts were addressed to him. And she did not know about any

Tanmay. Infact there were no Tanmays in her family that she could recall.

Cries, followed by screaming and pleadings were reaching her room again. She could make out three voices apart from her mom’s very distinctly. Her father’s, her granny’s and her aunt’s.

Then there was a fourth voice, the baby’s. Her little sister was crying the loudest. She could hear it from the adjacent room, her ears and heart following it downstairs and then in the backside courtyard.

A while later, her mother had stopped crying, but so had her little sister.